This week, six Chicago public elementary schools introduced a new, 7 ½ hour school day, which is 105 minutes longer than that of most other CPS schools. The implementation went smoothly, “without incident,” according to CPS spokeswoman Becky Carroll.

But the Longer School Day Pioneer Program – where schools that vote for a longer day get financial incentives ($150,000 and a two percent raise for teachers) – has damaged the relationship between the Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Teachers Union early on in the tenure of Mayor Rahm Emanuel and new CPS head Jean-Claude Brizard.

Carroll claims that, “Too many adults in this conversation are putting themselves ahead of students.”

CTU President Karen Lewis, meanwhile, has emphasized that CPS should first come up with a plan of how schools should most effectively use this extra time.

It’s a view echoed by Wendy Katten, co-founder of the Raise Your Hand Coalition, which held a forum Tuesday night on the longer school day.

“We know that by next year there is going to be a longer day for every school,” Katten says. “So we want to have some more attention to detail.”

But CPS and CTU aren’t just fighting over whether the experimental longer school program really will enhance classroom instruction. They’re also divided on basic factual issues, like how schools conducted these votes and how many schools have rejected the pioneer program.

Brizard introduced the pioneer program at the start of September after talks broke down between CPS and CTU over implementing a system-wide school longer school day this academic year. A week later, CTU filed an unfair labor practice complaint before the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board that CPS was coercing teachers to extend the day and, in so doing, broke the CPS-CTU collective bargaining agreement.

If the labor relation board were to side with CTU, the entire pioneer program could be thrown out.

According to CTU, while 13 schools have approved a longer day, a whopping 115 have voted the plan down. CTU has said that the number came from a “confidential school-by-school analysis.”

But according to CPS, only four schools have voted the plan down. Carroll points out that CTU has not produced a list of each of these 115 schools.

Calls to CTU were not returned.

As for the CTU charge that teachers were intimidated and even threatened with layoffs if they didn’t vote for a longer school day, the CPS central office “has no direct contact with teachers,” Carroll says. However, that does not negate the CTU claim that the central office pressured principals who, in turn, pressured teachers.

Tuesday night’s forum, held at Coonley Elementary School at 4046 N. Leavitt, focused less on these voting process disputes and more on the experimental program’s merits and popularity with parents.

The Raise Your Hand Coalition reported that 68 percent of 1,222 parents surveyed want a longer school day.

But that stat alone is somewhat meaningless – CPS and CTU agree that there should be a longer day. It will almost certainly be implemented before the 2012-13 school year when the CTU collective bargaining agreement expires and a state law kicks in that lets CPS unilaterally set a longer school day.

The question is how parents and teachers want those minutes used, which CPS has not specified.

Carroll of CPS says that, “We should not be dictating to principals and staff [how to use the extra time] when they know what their students need.” She adds that the 13 schools will provide “best practice and practices to avoid” when the longer day goes system-wide.

As for the dialogue at the forum, Katten says she was encouraged that an event including both CPS and CTU representatives managed to be respectful.

“That did surprise me,” Katten says. “That we could have a civil conversation.”

Image: Flickr/Kate.Gardiner